Antietam Anniversary

15092008

I’m back from Sharpsburg, where the Sharpsburg Historical Society put on their annual Heritage Days festival. I drove down Friday evening with my friend Mike, and met up with SHAF president Tom Clemens to set up our booth behind the German Reformed Church (UCC) early Saturday morning. We manned the booth until it was time for us to head up the street to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church for our talks at 2:00 and 3:00 PM respectively. Prior to that, fellow bloggers Mannieand Brianshowed up at the booth, Mannie only briefly to snap a few photos before heading back to the battlefield for his rangerin’ duties. (By the way, I will never, ever submit my readers to photos of my ugly mug, so you’re safe here.) While about 20 folks were in attendance at beautiful St. Paul’s for Tom’s talk on Shepherdstown, only 8 stuck around for my program. And three of them were friends of mine! But I hope everyone enjoyed the presentation, and a fairly lively Q&A ensued regardless. I also realized that this fourth presentation of a version of my Threads program took place in the fourth different state, the others being PA, NC, & OH. Tom, Mike, Brian, and I capped the day off with a nice dinner at Captain Bender’s in town, then I took Mike on a ride around the area, visiting the National Cemetery, the Pry farm, the Upper Bridge, Shepherdstown’s Cement Mill ruins, Ferry Hill Place, and Lee’s HQ before returning to our motel in Martinsburg.

Due to a SHAF board manpower shortage, I again returned to the Festival early Sunday morning to set up the booth while Mike went back to the park for a tour. Good friend Chris Army came down and visited for awhile after attending the early morning Ranger Walk, helping to take my mind off the mid 90’s (heat and humidity) conditions. A couple board members showed up around lunchtime, and Tom provided me with a super letter by and photo of a 14th Brooklyn soldier who returned to the battlefield in March 1862 – I’ll be posting it later. Mike and I then went up to the VC at the park and took a quick walk along the Union Attack Trail on the east side of Burnside’s Bridge – then it was back on the road for home. I got here around 7:30. High winds kicked in: the power went out in the 2nd quarter of the Steelers-Browns game, and I awoke this morning to a Black & Gold victory and some vinyl siding missing from the house. Take the good with the bad.

Anyway, gotta get caught up, including writing my reviews-in-brief for America’s Civil War. Back to posting after that.

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I was there with the family yesterday and had I known I would have introduced myself. After leaving the festival, we went to the park and I too ran into Ranger Mannie and we talked for a while and my daughter talked about Clara Barton.

I visited Antietam Battlefield this weekend and wrote about it on my blog. Since the battlefield is in a remote area, it has been less impacted by development than many other battlefields like Manassas and remains a great monument to those who died there.

Dulce bellum inexpertis

“I am sending you these little incidents as I hear them well authenticated. They form, to the friends of the parties, part of the history of the glorious 21st. More anon.”

About

Hello! I’m Harry Smeltzer and welcome to Bull Runnings, where you'll find my digital history project on the First Battle of Bull Run which is organized under the Bull Run Resources section. I'll also post my thoughts on the processes behind the project and commentary on the campaign, but pretty much all things Civil War are fair game. You'll only find musings on my “real job” or my personal life when they relate to this project. My mother always told me "never discuss politics or religion in mixed company”, and that's sound advice where current events are concerned.

The Project

This site is more than a blog. Bull Runnings also hosts digitized material pertaining to First Bull Run. In the Bull Run Resources link in the masthead and also listed below are links to Orders of Battle, After Action Reports, Official Correspondence, Biographical Sketches, Diaries, Letters, Memoirs, Newspaper Accounts and much, much more. Take some time to surf through the material. This is a work in process with no end in sight, so check back often!